11 ideas
20728 | Metaphysics is hopeless with its present epistemology; common-sense realism is needed [Colvin] |
Full Idea: Despair over metaphysics will not change until it has shaken off the incubus of a perverted epistemology, which has left thought in a hopeless tangle - until common-sense critical realism is made the starting point for investigating reality. | |
From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.144) | |
A reaction: It seems to me that this is what has happened to analytic metaphysics since Kripke. Careful discussions about the nature of an object, or a category, or a property, are relying on unquestioned robust realism. Quite right too. |
22076 | Being is only perceptible to itself as becoming [Schelling] |
Full Idea: Being is only perceptible to itself in the state of becoming. | |
From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.403), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.90 | |
A reaction: Is the Enlightenment the era of Being, and the Romantic era that of Becoming? They like process, fluidity, even chaos. |
20726 | We can only distinguish self from non-self if there is an inflexible external reality [Colvin] |
Full Idea: Were there no inflexible reality outside of the individual, opposing and limiting it, knowledge of the self and the non-self would never develop. | |
From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.140) | |
A reaction: Presumably opponents would have to say that such 'knowledge' is an illusion. This is in no way a conclusive argument, but I approach the problem of realism in quest of the best explanation, and this idea is important evidence. |
20727 | Common-sense realism rests on our interests and practical life [Colvin] |
Full Idea: It is the determination of the external world from the practical standpoint, from the standpoint of interest, that may be defined as the common-sense view of reality. | |
From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.141) | |
A reaction: Probably more appropriately named the 'pragmatic' view of reality. Relying on what is 'practical' seems to offer some objectivity, but relying on 'interest' rather less so. Can I be an anti-realist when life goes badly, and a realist when it goes well? |
20730 | If objects are doubted because their appearances change, that presupposes one object [Colvin] |
Full Idea: If objects are doubted because the same object appears differently at different times and circumstances, in order that this judgement shall have weight it must be assumed that the object under question is the same in its different presentations. | |
From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.145) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Scepticism could eat into the underlying object as well. Is the underlying object a 'substrate'? If so, what's that? Is the object just a bundle of a properties? If so, there is no underlying object. |
20729 | Arguments that objects are unknowable or non-existent assume the knower's existence [Colvin] |
Full Idea: Arguments for the absolute unknowability or non-existence of an external object only works by assuming that another external object, an individual, is known completely in so far as that individual expresses a judgement about an external object. | |
From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.145) | |
A reaction: Anti-realism is a decay that eats into everything. You can't doubt all the externals without doubting all the internals as well. |
20731 | The idea that everything is relations is contradictory; relations are part of the concept of things [Colvin] |
Full Idea: The doctrine [that all we can know is the relations between subject and object] is in its essence self-contradictory, since our very idea of thing implies that it is something in relation either actually or potentially. | |
From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.150) | |
A reaction: Ladyman and Ross try to defend an account of reality based entirely on relations. I'm with Colvin on this one. All accounts of reality based either on pure relations or pure functions have a huge hole in their theory. |
22074 | We must show that the whole of nature, because it is effective, is grounded in freedom [Schelling] |
Full Idea: What is required is to show that everything that is effective (nature, the world of things) is grounded in activity, life, freedom. | |
From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.351), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling | |
A reaction: I take the ancestor of this view of nature to be the monads of Leibniz, as the active principle in nature. Because this is an idealist view, it starts with the absolute freedom of the Self, and presumably sees nature in its own image. |
22075 | Only idealism has given us the genuine concept of freedom [Schelling] |
Full Idea: Until the discovery of idealism, the genuine concept of freedom has been missing from every modern system, whether it be that of Leibniz or of Spinoza. | |
From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.345), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.87 | |
A reaction: Spinoza denied free will, and Leibniz fudged it. Evidently more medieval theological accounts were not good enough. I presume Fichte is Schelling's hero, and he seems to see freedom as axiomatic about the Self. |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |